Talk:Alternative Plans/@comment-26436459-20151123105818/@comment-4391208-20151123125317
I don't believe any of the characters mentioned that possibility. However, nature does with more finality what the BETA have spent the last three decades in ML doing. I assume you're proposing a situation where the land, at the most, becomes nothing more than another frontline. It's not until very recently that we're able to construct ships that can last for long periods at sea and a significant attempt would have to be made to shift most industries, developed for a land-based infrastructure, to be reassembled/constructed at sea. Unlike in sci-fi works where spaceships can be put together in vacuum, very few types of ships can be constructed without a dry dock and a dry dock large enough to hold a city-ship would have to be immense. This is why Australia is so valued for the Eurasian nations; for all concerned it might as well be a floating city without the issues of seagoing vessels. Ships that connect together to form a larger part are one way of circumventing that without putting further strain on a war-torn world, but that still does not avoid another problem; the issue of wear and tear, especially corrosion by seawater, still a thorn in the side of every naval vessel since humanity first developed sailing. Most ships of today barely spend more than a full month at sea; even aircraft carriers must call to port for repairs. They only do not need to resupply their reactor frequently. The larger the structure, the larger the stresses on its weakpoints. Recent attempts at deep-sea mining of heavy materials to sustain a modern industry are still in the works and most of these are relatively close to the shores in only moderate amounts. The kind of demand the BETA war would call for would strangle the supply of available materials. Underwater cities take the above problems and add in extreme pressure. Underwater abodes do exist, but none of the scale to take on even the size of a town and none are movable. Evacuating an entire city to underwater is beyond our skill even today. Again, assembling a city module underwater (one far enough to be safe from the BETA) is not the same as assembling one on the moon. After 2 millennia of building things on land, shifting the whole of civilization underwater is only matched by shifting civilization to space. Feeding the population is another issue. Apparently MLUL/A has a highly-reliable synthetic food system, but the only way to sustain a high rate of food production at sea is to use hydroponics. Fishing is another method, but given the entire population of a city and multiply it by several times, sea life will face a crisis. Perhaps a reduced population will temper things down, but that's only for the time being. There are numerous hosts of issues with life on the seas and even the largest superstructure will not be invulnerable if nature decides to throw a fit with storms. Speaking of population, ships are built to a direct size and mass and as with any vehicle, overcrowding is more of a serious issue than it would be for a town on land. Increased clutter translates to decreased space and more hazards to life and structure. Heavy industries needed to construct materials and structures for continued life on/under the seas are a significant risk; they have processes that involve high heat, high pressure, volatile materials, or any and all of those three at once. An accident could well spell the end of a ship module, assuming we're using that system. A large, un-moduled underwater city would be destroyed by a single such accident. Water pressure can be terrifying if you let it be. Unfortunately even underwater cities and floating cities are just a temporary fix. The BETA have shown that if left alone, they'd shape the lands into nothing; Europe's Zuiderzee freshwater lake is turning into a salt lake as of 2001 in MLUL/A partially because BETA destruction of inland rivers have stopped water flow to it. Eventually, and if unchecked, the BETA will strip the Earth down to nothing, and when the seas begin drying up, humanity is going to have to face the music or simply turn over and die. To make any of the above a roaming superstructure will exacerbate any of the issues of life at sea further. At this point a space colony or several might well be easier to build because you can assemble them in a relatively sterile environment, out of permanent reach of the BETA, and have access to other planetoids and asteroids in the Solar System for materials mining instead of just those on Earth. No doubt water slows the BETA down but for all the troubles that come with it, you might as well just shift to space and be done with it. At the very least, the clouds won't block up your source of solar power.